Confessions of a Cat-holic (63)

It was about time for the selection of my desired subjects, which could determine which class I ended up at. My grades were top, as I said. I was right after Clairol in my class, making me the second. I felt at ease studying the new subjects, specifically the sciency chemistry and biology but I still hated physics. Then again, I didn't like all of the humanities subjects either. My favorite subject had always been history but I kind of disliked geography. I could still do fine given that I was a hard working student in my own standards.

The distribution of science and humanities stream students were highly imbalanced, like the school itself. Out of 6 classes, 5 and a half were the science students, with the humanities class made up of only less than 20 students. Not only that, the humanities students were objects of humiliation in school. They called them "Siberians". They had a very heavy focus on maths and physics, which I only found out after entering the school. It was not hard to notice that their physics problems were grooming the future Stephen Hawking. They made 80% of the questions fairly difficult, way above the mean in Hong Kong standards and the rest 20% was impossible to even comprehend, left alone answering it. So I always felt that I was too dumb for physics, even though I was never considered unintelligent by anyone prior to SPCC. Maybe my grades in elementary school were not excellent, but I reckoned book smart would never equate street smart.

After F.3, I found a new passion in chemistry. I thought I liked it because I liked the funny accents of my chemistry teacher, Mr Cheung. He told me he was good friend with Mr Kan, the chemistry teacher in my alma mater. Mr Cheung told me Mr Kan had a very pretty wife, while Mr Cheung was sadly single. Mr Cheung told me he envied the life of Mr Kan. I told him Mr Kan was always being made fun of in St Francis for his way of expressing himself and the choice of diction he used. Also, Mr Kan looked like a giraffe. But we liked him nevertheless. I felt very homey when I talked to Mr Cheung because we both knew Mr Kan fairly well.

I recently saw Mr Cheung in a shopping mall and I was surprised to find out that he was just married, 20 years after he taught me in school. He also retired from teaching in SPCC. I sometimes thought to myself, good guys like Mr Cheung must have been extinct in Hong Kong. Actually, honestly speaking, there were quite a handful of "good guys" in SPCC, like Rex. But they were like hidden gems, not easily noticed. Rex was one of them. People had totally skewed perception about him, and maybe me too. There was a girl in my class called Ng Yuen Kai （吳婉佳）. She was not pretty and unlike the rest, she was very curvy and she yelled at people at their face, sometimes with swear words too. She put her boobies on the edge of the swimming pool once and I was just surprised with awe about the size of her tits. I was flat chested like a man until my mid twenties. People made fun of Ng Yuen Kai because she was a new immigrant and she liked reading novels and fictions in school. But I liked to talk to her nevertheless, as we shared the same interests in Chinese language and literature. In that regard, I actually considered that I had more common traits with her than say, Lucy Luo, who also played basketball. But of course I wouldn't show it. Nobody knew my secret talents in writing in SPCC. I liked to keep myself mysterious and my rivals clueless. Ng Yuen Kai transferred to Heng Seng School of Commerce to complete her A -levels, which I gladly followed suit to study IB at Li Po Chun United World College.

Well, if you looked at the popular people in SPCC such as the Jackson 5, you would know what I meant. The typical profiles of a SPCC student was a hillbilly's one. He might be residing in Siu Sai Wan or Sai Wan with good singing talents and master skills in two or more musical instruments. His mother could be a nurse and his father a struggling staff in a local company. Both parents had to work to pay off the mortgage.